The field guide · rule 13 of 16
Keep AI on a budget and on the facts
Treat AI like any paid service that is sometimes wrong: cap the cost, give it checked facts, check its answers, and keep a person in charge.
What it means
AI can do real work, but it costs money each time and it can be wrong with confidence. Send each task to the cheapest model that can do it. Cap the spending. Give it only checked facts to work from. Ask for answers in a fixed format, check them, and keep a person in charge of anything that matters, such as money or what you publish.
What goes wrong without it
An AI assistant invents a price that is not on your site, and a customer holds you to it.
How I build it
- My AI agent system sends each task to a small, medium or large model depending on how hard it is, and refuses calls once the monthly cap is reached.
- The assistant on this site answers only from the published pages, and says so when the answer is not there.
- My language tutor may only use sentences that people have checked. Any word that is not from that checked set is flagged.
- My content tools check posts for private data, then wait for a person to approve them before anything is published.
Ask your team
- Is there a spending cap on your AI use?
- Does your AI work only from sources you have approved?
- Does a person approve anything that moves money or goes public?
How a review checks this
The AI readiness review maps where the AI reads, what it may do, who checks it and what it costs, before a small trial.
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